A few places you might find helpful information, in no particular order:
1. Try searching on
YouTube for "
Jared Platt Profoto" he has about half a dozen tutorials on there. He is very good at explaining the reason why he lights as he does, he does a lot of technical explaining, do not be put off by that, value it! It does not matter if it is indoors or out, listen to why he is putting lights here or there. The problem with most teaching is the lack of explained reasoning. I think the above posters are correct, most trainers do not have the level of sophisticated understanding.
2) Look at old books (2nd hand shops/internet) on how to portrait light from the 1940s/50s
3) Look at the workshops run by the Royal Photographic Society, most are in Bath which is an easy train ride / short walk to their headquarters. You do not need to be a member
4) For posing and lighting guides try
Jerry Ghionis
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2nNxaBA6ss
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmi9TPQ57Mo
5) Sue Bryce is a very good poser of people, so anything by her. Example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWvQUhzdtFA
6) Event Space training by B and H Photo, loads of hour long excellent videos on every aspect of business and photography you can name
https://www.youtube.com/user/BHPhotoVideoProAudio/videos
7) Modern books on Cinematography and Lighting (can order them on loan through your local library) as a good film maker knows more about lighting a space as well as the human in it, than most average photographers will ever know. Remember that lighting the space the person is in can totally change how you view the whole image and indeed what your perception of the model is. This is never mentioned by most trainers. It is covered in some of Jared Platts videos, another reason why I think he is good at what he does.
8) Watch films/movies for their lighting effects. It can be helpful if you find the story itself boring! There are a load of out of copyright films on YouTube, the term "full movie" is helpful when searching or use the name of an historic film star. The black and white films can be particularly interesting as you only have to deal with looking at the light and shadows, not the impact of additional colour. (note, do not click on any links to off site videos, stay in YouTube itself.)
9) Try the Strobist website, you may be able to do what you want to do with small flashguns, at least as an initial experiment.
http://strobist.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/lighting-101-start-here.html
10) Consider buying Yongnuo brand flashguns from Amazon - they are cheap but everyone finds them very high quality, forums are stacked out with praise for them.
11) Places such as Stage Electrics are very economic for buying coloured lighting gels etc from and they will deliver all around the country for a minimal charge.
http://www.stage-electrics.co.uk/shop/sales/lighting
12) Look at any Hollywood stills of stars (google images is your friend) either as portraits or as scenes from film sets. Anything between say the 1930's to 1970's is usually good, the stills photography quality declined pretty fast after that.
13) Corrective posing if the person has flaws - Jeff Smith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53egEtufcjg
14) Don't spent big money on equipment until you really know what you are doing, as it can soon add up to thousands. Consider hiring some light units from Calumet or other places you can find on the web or at the Photography Show stands. I have heard from and ex member of staff of a national chain that some suppliers who are not very nice will spot you are a beginner and use that to sell you every bit of equipment they can to boost their commission and sales, so be aware of this, even if it is rare. Someone I met still had studio equipment 1 year after purchase which they had never required or needed to take out of the boxes.
Hope all this is of some help. I wish I had known about some of the above resources when I started trying to find out more about lighting. I have been looking more in depth at lighting for my own benefit over the last couple of years. My sources and resources have become quite broad -- mostly because the more I looked at courses and modern photography books, the more I realised that most modern teachers really do not look for true sophistication in lighting, they just repeat whatever basic stuff they learned at the last course they attended themselves. I don't think its their fault, complex skilled lighting is just not pushed / awareness is not much raised other than for high end product photography. I personally have never attended a single course or demo where the teacher has said, 'this is the best lighting to use if the model has sticking out ears/poor skin/uneven facial features/fat arms ' and yet all of these can be helped by lighting. Most trainers just do not cover such important details and do not, I sadly conclude, have the slightest idea of the answers anyway. Do not be blinded by glossy presentations.
Another problem with most courses, books or videos is they only target very very limited ranges of models. If you want to learn to photograph flawless beautiful women aged 16-25 you will find plentiful examples as they are the easy shoot. In addition they attract male photographers to courses very readily.
If you want to learn to photograph people with flaws and to learn how to work around such issues by corrective posing or lighting, or to light and photograph older women, or men of any age at all you will find the learning well extremely dry, as nearly all courses still cater for photographers who are men (note how often the women models are referred to as 'girls') - the women attendees often being seen as mere financial add ons to the 'real' male students
I do have to agree here
That's a very comprehensive and helpful answer.
